momentarily

[Prof. R. Sussex]

Does anyone know when the characteristically American sense of
"momentarily" as "in a moment" first appeared? OED has a citation in
1869. One of the listeners to my weekly radio broadcasts on language
has found a citation from 1829 in an Australian explorer's journal.
The "in a moment" sense has only recently become established in this
country, parallel to the older British "for a moment".

Roly Sussex

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Roly Sussex
Professor of Applied Language Studies
Department of French, German, Russian, Spanish and Applied Linguistics
School of Languages and Comparative Cultural Studies
The University of Queensland
Brisbane
Queensland 4072
AUSTRALIA

Office: Greenwood 434 (Building 32)
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